


Shifting Sands and Capricious Gods

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: The Travel Collection: Drabbles, Snippets, and Supershorts [18]
Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001)
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A set of snippets set during and around the Mummy movies, most in one particular unnamed AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Younger God

They may follow a younger deity, a god jealous of split attention, but they've never forgotten that there are older gods, nor the power those god wielded in the youth of Egypt. So despite their homage and loyalty to a god more recently brought to their homeland, they pay mind to those old gods as well, that they do not fade so much as to allow old evils to escape which are beyond mortal skill to destroy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "cove".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Ocean's Edge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/749690).


	2. Distant Stars

In the desert, it is dark enough for her to look up and see the stars. They are different here, though she can barely remember the stars of her homeworld any more. The sky there was always dark enough at night to see the stars, save when the moons were full, and the brightness hid the paler light of the more distant stars.

"Mother?" The quiet voice of her eldest son recalled her to the reason she'd come out of the tent, and the camp, to look up at the stars she'd traveled, and then fell from. "Father is asking for you to come back."

With a quiet sigh, she turns from the sky, letting her son guide her back through the darkness and the tents to the one she's called home for half a century. Where her husband - her rescuer and protector and teacher - lay dying, age and a hard life catching up with him while she still looks an age to be her own daughter.

Kneeling next to the bed, she reaches out to take his hand, and brings it to her lips. It doesn't matter to her that he's aged before her, though it worries her for what it means for her children. Their children.

"I am here, husband." Even though she fears what is coming, she will not leave him to face it alone, not when he has called her to his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "dark".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Not Always the Absence of Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/951873).


	3. Water From the Sky

The first time she travels outside of the desert that is now her home, Ardeth is taking her to visit friends of his, in a cooler, northern place called Britain, in their city of London. They travel by ship, and then by train, through weather unlike anything Sale'ah has seen before. Ardeth calls it rain, and she wonders at it, tilting her head back as they step out of the train. Water falling from the sky.

She smiles as it hits her face, and laughs, turning her head to look over at Ardeth. He has an indulgent smile on his face, and after a moment, he draws her close, guiding her from the platform, and toward where a car is waiting, with a man and his wife beside it. The rain does not stop until after night falls, and she is curled in the strange bed next to Ardeth. Only then does she sleep, dreaming of water falling from a sky far from Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "rain".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [A Misty Veil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/1276502).


	4. Star-Demons

The wind brings unfamiliar scents and far too familiar dust on it to the tall cliffs where the city is delved into the mountains. A winter home while the great storms rip the sands from the desert and fling them through the air like a child throwing a tantrum.

Devrali seals the shutter once more, turning away to look at the room she's lived in for the last several months. Walls adorned with brightly painted symbols of clan and bloodline, like the tents that her mother had spoken of when Devrali was a child. Fabrics in shades of brown and muted red that are the natural colors of the beasts which carry burdens and people across this desert like camels do the deserts on Earth. Frames of precious, precious wood that hint at the wealth of the family her mother had come from.

And the most precious belonging of all, a jug which held a ration of water for the day, brought in the morning by a child who looked to be awed to be in the presence of someone who had run the gauntlet of star-demons and survived.

A soft huff escapes her mouth, and she runs a hand through her short-cropped hair, free of the veil she wears as a nod to traditions both of her father and of her mother. Star-demons. Aliens who slaved and terrorized and stole, and thought they could buy their way into the good graces of Earth.

Aliens who'd not expected to see one of their victims among the people who'd come to greet them. Who'd not expected to hear the sharp condemnation from her lips. Who'd not expected her family, her adopted people, her adopted planet, to say they would not treat with terrorists. Who'd not expected Earth to have the strength, even though they'd left their planet and traveled to the stars, to stand against them.

Star-demons. Devrali shakes her head, and draws a deep breath before pouring herself a small cup of water, and reaching for her veil. Another day of work before her, of training desert nomads to become a fighting force that would be better able to resist the terrorists. They had the strength and the raw physical resources - it had been what attracted the terrorists to this planet in the first place - and Earth had the technology to help them take back their future.

A smile crosses her face as she wraps the veil tightly so it wouldn't interfere in her work. Time to take back her people's future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "wind".
> 
> Originally posted as part of [The Travel Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754), in the chapter [Sky-Song](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439754/chapters/1471349).

**Author's Note:**

> **OCs for this story/AU:**
> 
>  
> 
> Sale'ah - a human-looking alien who escaped slavers while above Earth, and crashed into the Sahara near Hamunaptra somewhere between the first and second movie. She marries Ardeth not out of any affection on either part at the time, but as a measure of protection for her, and because others in the tribe meddle.
> 
> Devrali Bey - one of the children of Sale'ah and Ardeth, who joins the space program and is one of the first to make contact with an alien race.


End file.
